Photographing Fireworks

As soon as summer rolls around it seems that quite a few events are
surrounded by fireworks. Photographing fireworks can be a bit tricky,
but with a bit of practice it can be a lot of fun.

The problem with fireworks is that their colourful and dynamic nature
means that you cannot use your camera's metering system to provide
information about exposure to take the picture. By the time your camera
processes what it is seeing and you press the shutter button, the
explosion is gone. The whole idea is to open the shutter when the rocket
it just launching and close it after the burst has finished. If your
shutter speed is too fast, all you will get are pinpoints of light
instead of the beautiful lines that make fireworks so attractive.

So, now that we know what we are after, lets look at the needed
equipment.

Gear:

Tripod. I cannot stress this enough. You need a sturdy tripod
planted firmly on the ground. Try to avoid sand as it generally
shifts when you least expect it and there goes your composition. The
bigger the camera the bigger the tripod. Make sure you can shoot in
the vertical position.

Camera. Beyond the obvious need for one, you must be able to set
the camera to full manual mode. This means that you get to control
the focus, aperture, and shutter speed. I will get into the details
of how to set each further down.

Memory Cards. Do the math. Firework exposure times vary between
1 to 15 seconds though I find most of my shots are around the 3 to 5
second mark. So if you figure the fireworks will last 15 minutes and
you average 3 seconds per image, that works out to roughly 300
pictures. It is better to have one memory card capable of holding
all of those images rather than 3 or 4 cards and having to
swap them during the show. If you shoot RAW,
get a very big card.

Cable or remote release. These useful tools let you trigger the
camera shutter without physically touching the camera and causing
blurring or messing up your composition.

Picnic type stuff. Blanket, towel, food, water, book, etc. You
have to show up early to most events so bring something to do while
you are waiting for the fun to start. Pack up all you garbage when
you leave too.

Setting-up:

Find a comfortable spot from which you will be able to see the
show without having people obstruct your view.

Set up the tripod and camera. Make sure it's firmly planted on
the ground.

Composition. This can be a bit tricky. You have to factor in the
height and width of the bursts and without them present; the best
thing you can do is guess. Include some foreground elements if you
wish for a more scaled look. You can always adjust your composition
at the beginning of the show to compensate. Just remember that you
can always crop so don't worry if you are are bit too zoomed out.
This is one of those times where a zoom is invaluable.

Aperture. F8 to F11. That's it. Just remember, if you use a large
aperture (lower F number) then you risk severely overexposing your
shots and
ruining them.

Focus. Either set the hyperfocal distance for your F-stop or
focus at infinity. I generally use infinity unless I have some
foreground elements that I want sharp as well. Don't touch the focus
for the rest of the night. This is easy to mess up in the dark.

Shutter. Set your camera to bulb
mode. If you decided to include some foreground in your composition
such as buildings, trees, etc, you will have to expose for the it
and maintain that exposure for all you fireworks shots. Or you can
be sneaky and do a foreground exposure and later blend it with a
fireworks exposure in Photoshop. This way you can ignore the
foreground and focus on capturing the fireworks correctly. It won't
matter if the foreground is over or underexposed in your firework
images since it will be replaced.

Shooting:

Generally it's a good idea to verify your composition during the few
initial bursts. It's been my experience that most firework shows start
with a fairly huge display to begin with so composing to that should be
fine.

Now for taking the actual pictures. Generally the idea is to open the
shutter when a rocket is just about to launch and close it when the
burst is finished. This can be difficult to do if there are lots of
rockets going up, but with some practice you can get the hang of it.
Once you are shooting for a while you will develop a sense of when the
next burst is about to take off.

Sometimes, it is possible to keep the shutter open for multiple bursts
without the risk of overexposure. This can be done using a black card or
any other object that can be used to block the lens. In this case you
could keep the shutter open for quite some time and just cover and
uncover the lens to capture the image. Be aware however, that the longer
the shutter is opened, the more noise will build up on the image. This
will be mostly noticeable if you are using a small compact digital
camera. Also, the more bursts there are in the frame the more cluttered
and
messy
the image can appear especially if the the bursts explode one on top of
the other in the exact same location.

Final Thoughts:

Fireworks can be a lot of fun. You will only get better with practice.
The first time I tried I only kept 10 or so images out of 480. Yeah,
that bad. Second time I kept over 80 out of 410. The last time almost
200 were keepers. You can see some of them
here. I hope to improve as time goes on and I get more practice.

It can be fun to make a day of it, especially here in Vancouver for the
annual Celebration of Light. The shore is usually packed by 3pm and the
fireworks start at 10. Best bet is to come early, relax, and set up when
the time is near.